Security - Player 2 has already played this turn?

[Pepper]

dan and I have a pbem, i sent him my setup, he did his setup and played his first turn, sent it back to me, I think I did a turn, back to him, back to me, now I cannot open it, I get the "Player 2 has already played this turn." error. Very odd, not sure what to do....

[embis]

Just wondered if you are still looking at this problem.(If it is a problem)

I have just had a game killed by "Player2 has already played this turn" Happened really close to the end, V frustrating. I have the files and will send you my password and ask my opponnent to do the same if you are still collecting suspect game files.

[DRG]

embis said:
Just wondered if you are still looking at this problem.(If it is a problem)

I have just had a game killed by "Player2 has already played this turn" Happened really close to the end, V frustrating. I have the files and will send you my password and ask my opponnent to do the same if you are still collecting suspect game files.

Send the files and the passwords and well see if anything can be found. I also need to know that both games are in the standard file path the game installer suggested when you were extracting it. If they are not, don't bother sending the files

However, here's something one of our playtesters found on the 'net that may help you. I haven't tested this personally becasue I've never had the "Player2 has already played this turn" problem

Don
------------------------------------------------------------

Basically, the game is telling us that the current turn has already been played. You may have exited the session or closed your turn.
However the file will not reopen.

If we did not zip our turn beforehand we will need to replay the file if your opponent also receives the same message.
To do so simply unzip your opp's previous turn send in the slot.
Then open it with your password. Be sure to end this turn immediately.

Now retrieve your opponents most current send and place it in the slot. Open the file with your password. You can now play out your turn without trouble, but be sure to end your turn and to zip it instantly for sending.

You may delete the .DAT file to avoid accidentally trying to reopen your file. Be sure though to leave the .CMT file in the slot so that when the game is open you can tell that there is a game currently running in that slot.

This works for both WinMBT and SPMBTver3.1 Relax your game is still good.

One warning though. Be careful with the above procedure. It causes your turn report opens-closes-fails to miscue.

[Mobhack]

Stian said:
Hi I just got this weird bug in WinSPMBT:
This is the second PBEM game I'm playing with a friend, and after we've both moved on turn 1 we keep getting the message "Security - Player 2 has already played this turn?" and the save won't load at all.

I've never seen this error before, and it seems quite illogical as an error - I mean, *of course* player 2 (which is me) already has played the turn, and it's now player 1s turn!

Any ideas what might cause this message? We are playing scenario 103 Chess France 1952, france vs france, and we both use windows XP - if that helps.

regards,
Stian

Actually - on deeper investigation, I will need to reword this security message, as it arises when:

a) it is player 1's orders phase
and
b) The current path to the game EXE differs from the original saved player 1 path to the game EXE

b can arise from:
- trying to play the game in a different installation of the game
- Trying to play on another machine

Both of which are end-user errors in trying to go around the requirements for a PBEM game.

- or (possibly) something - another programme would be the culprit - changing the current working directory. Did you have anything else running?. That one is an outside chance really.


The error message should really be "Player 1 is trying to play this turn in a different directory from the original one he started the game in" (or something shorter to fit the error message box !!)

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

QUESTION

Have any of you who reported this earlier had any further incidences of this problem once you had played a few more times??

Becasue neither Andy or I have had this happen to us we tend to treat this as a procedural probem based on player inexperience so we want to know if anyone had this happen early on but they are playing OK now

The problem is, it's very difficult to debug something that hasn't happened to us and only seems to occur rarely. I have to assume there are more than just a dozen of so people playing PBEM and if everyone was getting this we'd be flooded with bug reports, However, maybe some of you have just given up reporting ( ?? ) if yes..DON'T. If you've had this happen a dozen times and only reported it once tell us. If you've been reading these threads and had this happen to you and haven't reported your peoblems then please tell us as we need all the info we can.

Don

[Mobhack]

Mobhack said:

Actually - on deeper investigation, I will need to reword this security message, as it arises when:

a) it is player 1's orders phase
and
b) The current path to the game EXE differs from the original saved player 1 path to the game EXE

b can arise from:
- trying to play the game in a different installation of the game
- Trying to play on another machine

Both of which are end-user errors in trying to go around the requirements for a PBEM game.

- or (possibly) something - another programme would be the culprit - changing the current working directory. Did you have anything else running?. That one is an outside chance really.


The error message should really be "Player 1 is trying to play this turn in a different directory from the original one he started the game in" (or something shorter to fit the error message box !!)

Cheers
Andy

An additional thing would be - if you reinstalled the game for some reason, and then tried to continue an ongoing PBEM, as that will often nuke PBEM security info.

Did you reinstall the game or apply a patch, install the CD edition etc?

Did you change the path to the game by renaming folders?

Cheers
Andy

[embis]

I just had it happen in a second game now.

I wont send you the files because I havent used the default path for the install.


Starting to feel rather cautious about starting anymore PBEM games now.

Is it really necessary for the game to lock you out after a security breech?

Couldnt it just be set up to alert you and then load the turn anyway...at least then the player could choose to decide "my opponents a cheat I dont want to finish this game" instead of having the game make this decision on the players behalf.

[Mobhack]

embis said:
I just had it happen in a second game now.

I wont send you the files because I havent used the default path for the install.

Starting to feel rather cautious about starting anymore PBEM games now.

Is it really necessary for the game to lock you out after a security breech?

Couldnt it just be set up to alert you and then load the turn anyway...at least then the player could choose to decide "my opponents a cheat I dont want to finish this game" instead of having the game make this decision on the players behalf.

Did you do any of the things I mentioned to your path or file names etc?

if not - perhaps your opponent did (perhaps without realising the side effects ?).

As this particular message ensures that the player cannot load the save game onto a different computer or path and try the turn several times - then it really should stop play, IMHO.

I'd like to get to the bottom of why a very few players seem to be getting this particular message. It would be very nice to find some way to reproduce the error!.

The version in the patch will be dumping a text file with debug info on a PBEM load attempt (including the current path you are trying to play in, and the expected path for both players).

Cheers
Andy

[embis]

Thanks Andy,
I do have three installations on my system,(I know!!) One for Mods OOb edits and the like, (which I dont play any pbem games in) One to finish my old pbem games and one (from the CD) for my new games.

The problems have occoured once in the CD version and once in the D/L version.

Once the error occured when it was my turn and once when it was my opponents turn.

I tried deleting the old "faulty" turn restoring the previous "good" turn and then re-playing the "faulty" turn. still the same message.

Although I havent installed to the default paths in any version, neither have I changed the paths since the games were installed.

Obviously with two competing versions of the game on my system there is the risk that I inadvertantly unzipped to the wrong game but, obviously, I dont think that happened.

Anyway as my PBEM games fail the need for having more than one version on my system is rapidly becoming academic

I understand why you believe that the game should halt if a security breech is recognised...but if it didnt do that at least we could all have finished our games.

[Stian]

Thanks for continuing the investigation Andy

I have to agree with embis that it shouldn't be necessary to lock players out because of a 'security breach'. Better to warn *both* players that something failed on the other end so that they could sort things out between themselves, for instance - if one user had to re-install the game and told the other then it should be no problem.

My opponent and I have not had this error again in our latest 4 games so things are looking good for us. Both still using PBEM Helper. Neither me nor my opponent have changed directories for the game or changed computers since installing the game.

But - I admit that the first time I got the error I had 'accidentaly' (ok ... I was curious) deleted PBEMRegistry.dat since I didn't understand what it did. I tend to do these things when my curiosity gets too high

The game worked fine afterwards but I got the error after my opponent had played and sent me his turn. So, it could be related or not, and people here have been very firm in that PBEMRegistry is not the culprit so I don't know.

Anyway, as I understand it the PATH to the game (for me 'e:\games\WinSPMBT\') gets saved in the SpEml001.dat file (encrypted), and then the game runs a check on the path every time it's opened? But even with this check, what's to stop a cheater from playing the same turn over again just by overwriting the old game? The path hasn't changed so the check should pass.

However I've noticed that if I try this (and just for *testing* thank you), the loads/quits/fails counter still gets increased, which is nice since that would still let the other player check for signs of cheating without locking them out of the game. But does this not also mean that the number of turns played are recorded *somewhere* else than the savegame .dat file since this just gets overwritten?

I'm not asking *where* it's saved, just wondering if...

And please don't misunderstand and think I ask this because I want to *cheat* - It's just that I'm curious as to how the security measures work in PBEM games, since obviously it's a lot different than SPWAW which I've got more experience with.

Looking forward to the patch!

Stian